The Meet Group just launched a livestreaming dating game

Publicly traded social media conglomerate The Meet Group, behind apps like MeetMe and Tagged is adding another feature to its roster: a livestreaming dating game called NextDate.

The New Hope-based tech company rolled out the game at the end of October, saying in a statement that users can “star in their own dating game.”

The game’s setup is similar to speed dating, where a user can click through livestreaming “dates.” The pairs get 90 seconds to either chose “next,” which will move the user on to the next person or “date,” which allows the users to connect via video chat in the future.

Yes, it’s kind of like “Next,” the best/worst MTV show of the early 21st century.

The game, which is available on MeetMe and Skout apps as of Oct. 29, also gives users conversation prompts to help “evaluate compatibility,” the company said. There’s also a date tab that makes it easier to find users within specific age, gender and location preferences.

(Example screenshot via The Meet Group)

“We believe more and more linear programming experiences will have a livestreaming analog, and we don’t believe anyone has yet cracked the code on the livestreaming dating game,” said Meet Group CEO Geoff Cook. “We see NextDate as a way to further grow our video audience with a new type of content that resonates with our biggest segment: users interested in dating.”

The company said it’s been testing a beta version of the game in the U.K., and hopes to achieve a goal of increasing video audience by 20% by Q1 of 2020. The company also hopes to launch NextDate on its other apps, like Tagged and LOVOO in the next few months.

Earlier this year, The Meet Group added a same-sex dating app to its portfolio by acquiring Seattle-based Growlr, an app that then had about 200,000 daily users.

In January, Cook told Technical.ly that the company’s focus on live video and in-app gifting had helped the social media beat its 2018 revenue by $4.5 million. All told, the company’s brands pulled in $178 million in revenue, he said.